PHASES
Wintry and wild and wasting and above
All winds in woe, out of a bleak grey sky,
With sharp-tooth'd wings, it blows—the eastern wind—
And like a two-edged sword that sleety breath
Cuts and drives through. The bitter sea beneath
Assumes a kindred mood, and, wrought thereby,
Responds in fury, raging on the rocks—
All quiet coves, where sunny shallows smiled,
And plash'd and rippled, in a milder mood,
Filling with savage voices. Pause and watch
The troubled morning ripen far across
Those spuming billows; through this lifting mist
The lone and dreadful ocean shews no life
Of bird or boat. One presence on the peak
Of yon sea-splinter'd spur, with bony arms
Incites all winds and waters on to war;
She only calm, the foe of peace and man,
Bids strife and tempest still possess the world.
An elemental battle, as of old,
Deepens about her. Who shall break her spells?
Who bid the baleful fury hold henceforth
The shafts and fatal watchwords of the fight?
An answer comes: the Rose is in the East;
There at the source of strife comes the Lord Day;
Comes splendid Sun, dispersing dark and cloud;
The driven mists before his rays dissolve,
The phantom flees, a sudden stillness steeps
The weary space of air; the ocean springs
Lightsome and gladsome, blue beneath the blue—
Clear depth and lucent height.
O dark and storm,
O peace and glow, your phases haunt the soul,
The world unknown of man within himself!
And from this pageantry of Nature we
May learn the mystic lesson of the East!
Whence first the darkness comes, first comes the light;
Whence bitter winds, the morning's fragrant joy;
And so the desolation and the gloom
Obscure of souls are visitants of God,
From the same world unknown of that dread will
Which brings His morning beam of life and grace
To soothe, to comfort and to purify.
When on the aspirations of our heart
A darkness falls and, all her aids withdrawn,
No comfort comes to cheer thee, lonely soul,
God is not with thee less in dark than light;
So in aridity and drought discern
His ministry and one true way to Him!
A little while He leaves thee, to return
In fuller sweetness—ah, He leaves thee not!
His consolation, not His ward or watch,
Withdraws awhile, and thus He leads thee on,
That thou through dereliction and great pain
Mayest pass forth into felicity.
God waits behind the darkness of thy soul,
As waits the sun to gladden earth and sea;
And bitter winds, possessing all the East,
Can hinder not—nor darkness bar the way.
